The Water Phoenix Kinghttp://www.waterphoenixking.com
Sun, 20 Sep 2015 17:27:06 +0000en-UShourly1Volume 20 Page 79http://www.waterphoenixking.com/comic/volume-20-page-79
http://www.waterphoenixking.com/comic/volume-20-page-79#commentsMon, 14 Sep 2015 03:23:03 +0000http://www.waterphoenixking.com/?post_type=comic&p=3629
And that’s it! I hope everyone enjoyed reading The Water Phoenix King as much as I enjoyed writing and drawing it!]]>

And that’s it! I hope everyone enjoyed reading The Water Phoenix King as much as I enjoyed writing and drawing it!

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http://www.waterphoenixking.com/comic/volume-20-page-78#commentsFri, 11 Sep 2015 03:06:11 +0000http://www.waterphoenixking.com/?post_type=comic&p=3609
I’ve just started the coloring on the last page. I expected to have a larger buffer as I finished WPK, but it’s not like it’s *needed* at this point, you know? I’m trying to figure out where I was, mentally, […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...]]>

I’ve just started the coloring on the last page. I expected to have a larger buffer as I finished WPK, but it’s not like it’s *needed* at this point, you know?

I’m trying to figure out where I was, mentally, when I began WPK. The comic began on DrunkDuck, drawn on the same old Wacom tablet, in my mother’s dining room. She needed me to watch her new puppy, so every day I’d go to her house with a big pile of computer stuff, set up, and get barked at for eight hours by a tiny and furious bichon. The bichon is now only slightly larger and is still furious.

The actual layout of the pages is based on those of Lovecraft Is Missing, a webcomic whose creator died during the creation of WPK. I don’t think I ever thanked him for creating such a cool and visually distinctive comic. (I would link you, but the domain has since expired.) Though it’s funny–the last chapter of my previous comic, Broken Space, already anticipated the 3×3 grid that I would use throughout WPK. It’s not a bad system, and it made for good training wheels, though it leaves a lot of wasted space. Were I to make another comic, I’d try something more freeform.

One thing I remember clearly as I sat down to write WPK was my dissatisfaction with so many long-format comics, both in print and online, a dissatisfaction I still feel. They rambled; they never went anywhere; nothing got resolved. Frankly most dramatic scripts now are terrible, and I’m not even talking about the helpless trash the Big Two churn out–that stuff is worth no one’s time. I mean even well-drawn dramatic series online and in print today display storytelling skills that wouldn’t fly in midcentury sword & sorcery.

I endeavored to reach back to early Marvel comics and produce a comic that could be read either as a single huge story or as 20 or so sequential stories. I don’t know exactly if I succeeded, but I had fun. I got to clear my mental slate and shake off my nagging need to react to entertainment I grew up with (WPK has a lot of Buffy and a lot of Babylon 5, and it’s a reaction to both). I got to fill a comic with women who drove the plot, rather than being mere plot tokens, power-ups, or adjuncts to silly bromances. I got to practice my plotting and my art. My art didn’t get much better, but WPK taught me so much about plotting that it’ll take years to synthesize all of it. I wrote three novels while working on WPK, each better than the last. (I think!)

And one thing novels taught me is that I really like writing novels. I probably won’t create another comic after WPK, at least not if I have to draw it. Drawing is fun but it takes *forever*. The sheer time investment in comics is a killer. I’ll be happy to be done with it. Right now I have a pile of novel manuscripts to finish up and, of course, one last comic page to draw.

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http://www.waterphoenixking.com/comic/volume-20-page-77#commentsWed, 09 Sep 2015 14:09:51 +0000http://www.waterphoenixking.com/?post_type=comic&p=3606
Hrm, not entirely pleased with the linework on this page. I’m getting close to finishing the end of my pages. Once that’s done, I think I’ll write up final versions of the character and setting pages. Then I’ll get to […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...]]>

Hrm, not entirely pleased with the linework on this page.

I’m getting close to finishing the end of my pages. Once that’s done, I think I’ll write up final versions of the character and setting pages. Then I’ll get to work on a cover/splash page–really try to take my time with it–and then that’ll be that.

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http://www.waterphoenixking.com/comic/volume-20-page-76#commentsMon, 07 Sep 2015 12:51:12 +0000http://www.waterphoenixking.com/?post_type=comic&p=3603
Lyca, Gilgam has worn the same shirt for forty years. You can do better. Shreyas’ role expanded even more significantly than Corva’s, and for the simple reason that Shreyas is fun to write. Oh, and her job at the Inn […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...]]>

Lyca, Gilgam has worn the same shirt for forty years. You can do better.

Shreyas’ role expanded even more significantly than Corva’s, and for the simple reason that Shreyas is fun to write. Oh, and her job at the Inn of Silver Leaves? She’s a chef. In the entire near-1,000-page run of this comic, I think she’s shown cooking one other time.

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http://www.waterphoenixking.com/comic/volume-20-page-75#commentsFri, 04 Sep 2015 02:39:06 +0000http://www.waterphoenixking.com/?post_type=comic&p=3597
Reviewing my initial draft of Water Phoenix King, it’s amazing how much has changed from conception (in 2008 or so) to the present. I wrote out a complete beat-by-beat summary for the whole comic, and then proceeded to deviate wildly […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...]]>

Reviewing my initial draft of Water Phoenix King, it’s amazing how much has changed from conception (in 2008 or so) to the present. I wrote out a complete beat-by-beat summary for the whole comic, and then proceeded to deviate wildly from it starting around chapter 7. Corva was supposed to be a fairly minor character, a training-montage-mentor-figure for Anthem, but when Okidesha’s metaphysical role in the story expanded, I wanted a mouthpiece for the lava goddess, and turning Corva into her priestess made sense. Then she basically ate up a bunch of plots. Only Din Maia Hin (the dragon-woman in chapter 16) and the Kepteriad survived Corva’s voracious rampage across the subplots.

By contrast, several of the other characters got “out-leveled” by events in the story. Reshma and Arduna are just big guys with military training–they’re helplessly outclassed by god-eating alchemical blasphemies and the other stuff Maresh brewed up toward the end.

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http://www.waterphoenixking.com/comic/volume-20-page-74#commentsWed, 02 Sep 2015 03:36:53 +0000http://www.waterphoenixking.com/?post_type=comic&p=3590
Pondering my next project. Also eating cheese because my girlfriend won a cheese-naming contest and her award was an enormous half-wheel of cheese.]]>

Pondering my next project. Also eating cheese because my girlfriend won a cheese-naming contest and her award was an enormous half-wheel of cheese.

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http://www.waterphoenixking.com/comic/volume-20-page-71#commentsWed, 26 Aug 2015 13:04:34 +0000http://www.waterphoenixking.com/?post_type=comic&p=3580
It’s surprisingly hard to indicate that Lyca, on the one hand, and Commito, Varaxunax, and Princess Ismene, on the other hand, are different kinds of disembodied entities.]]>

It’s surprisingly hard to indicate that Lyca, on the one hand, and Commito, Varaxunax, and Princess Ismene, on the other hand, are different kinds of disembodied entities.